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Article: THE INVENTION OF AUTONOMY: A HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.(Review)
- Article from:
- Theological Studies
- Article date:
- September 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Theological Studies, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE INVENTION OF AUTONOMY: A HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. By J. B. Schneewind. New York: Cambridge University, 1998. Pp. xxii + 624. $69.95.
Schneewind presents here a valuable analysis of the history of moral philosophy as it leads to the thought of Immanuel Kant. He began work on this massive work in order to understand better the context of Kant's ethics, which, he shows, must be grasped not only as a response to the positions of predecessors like Hume, Rousseau, Wolff, and Crusius but also to the entire history of modern moral philosophy that preceded him. A superb historian of ideas, S. is particularly adept at communicating the distinctive specificity of ...